I’d managed to cram a lot into my morning. After the drugstore, I’d hit a corner convenience, bought baby food, dyed my hair, showered, emptied the contents, and washed the jars. Then I’d gone out again, attacked a Rhino-boy, cut off part of his arm and stabbed him, putting him out of both our miseries, and making sure he didn’t live to tell any tales of a human girl stealing Fae power. Then I’d sliced and diced the stump of arm into bite-size pieces.

If only I’d kept some handy, as I’d wanted to after feeding Jayne, Moira might not have died. If something unexpected and awful happened while I was in the bookstore, I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared this time; I wanted a dose of superpower close at hand. It wasn’t as if it would ever expire. It was the only snack I knew of with an immortal shelf life.

My hunting and gathering expedition had nothing to do with Derek O’Bannion or Fiona, or the reminder of how weak I was compared to them. It was proactive. It was smart. It was just plain, good common sense. I slid the small fridge out from beneath the rear counter and tucked several jars behind it, before sliding it back in. The others I would stash away upstairs later.

After catching myself staring at them for several minutes without blinking, I stuffed the jars in my purse. Out of sight, out of mind.

I opened my laptop, hooked up my camera, and began uploading the pages. While I waited, I called the ALD again, to make sure the dreamy-eyed boy really understood the urgency of the message I’d asked him to relay. He assured me he did.

I tended to customers for the next several hours. It was a busy morning and sales were brisk. It wasn’t until early afternoon that I got to sit down, and take a look at the pages Dani had photographed.

I was disappointed by how small they were, barely the size of recipe cards. The scribbled lines were cramped tightly together, and when I finally managed to begin deciphering the small, slanted script, I realized what I had was a pocket notebook of observations and thoughts penned in a badly butchered version of the English language. The spelling made me suspect the author had had little in the way of formal education, and had lived many centuries ago.

After studying it for some time, I opened my own journal, and began to write down what I believed was a fair translation.

The first page picked up in the middle of a lengthy diatribe about The Lyte and The Darke—which I swiftly realized meant the Seelie and Unseelie—and how dastardly and “Evyle” they both were. I already knew that.

However, halfway through the page, I found this: